On June 4, the ASM is offering an audioconference on HIV-1 Genotyping: What Bench Techs Need to Know (slide enhanced) at 1:00pm ET. The purpose of this audioconference is to familiarize bench technologists with what they need to know about the HIV-1 Genotype Test including the clinical significance of the test, how clinicians benefit from the test, what to do if the test in not offered in your laboratory and what to look for in a send-out lab. Belinda Yen-Lieberman, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, is the audioconference speaker.

New ASM Website

The ASM has reorganized its website, moved it to a new domain on the World Wide Web, and added new features. To view ASM’s new web site, go to http://www.asm.org.

ASM Press recently published “Global Disease Eradication: the Race for the Last Child,” by Cynthia A. Needham and Richard Canning. The authors present the history of three separate campaigns to eradicate a major infectious disease worldwide. The first, against malaria, though undertaken with ambition and optimism, ultimately failed: at the beginning of the 21st century, malaria threatens the health of over 2,400 million people worldwide. In contrast, the campaign against smallpox succeeded for a wide variety of reasons. Now public health workers are within a hair's breadth of eradicating polio -- the third campaign -- but tremendous uncertainties still surround the effort.